The present invention relates to cooking apparatus for the household kitchen.
Many labor-saving and time-saving devices have been devised to assist the home cook. Some such devices are used for preparing the ingredients prior to cooking. These include devices for chopping, grinding and mixing of ingredients and range from the familiar variable-speed electric mixer and blender to the more elaborate food processor with interchangeable blades for preparing such items as chopped onions, sliced potatoes and julienne carrots in a matter of seconds. Other such devices are specially adapted to assist in cooking the prepared ingredients. These include devices dedicated to particular types of food, such as toaster ovens and electric corn poppers, and devices for controlling cooking temperature, such as electric frying pans and woks and electrically heated, insulated crocks for long, slow simmering.
Advances in solid-state electronics and microprocessors have also benefited the experienced home cook and the non-cook alike. For example, kitchen stoves are available with solid state monitoring apparatus for keeping the cook apprised of the temperature in the stove's oven during cooking. Programmable microwave ovens may be used first to defrost and then to cook frozen cuts of meat or frozen pre-prepared dinners.
Although devices of the above sort are of great assistance, the home cook must still interpret and execute a written recipe. The following recipe for a chicken dish known as coq an vin illustrates the cooking steps to be followed without the use of the present invention.
First, roughly three tablespoons of butter are melted in an appropriate pan situated on the top of a stove or in an electric frying pan. To the pan are added one-quarter pound minced salt pork, three-quarters cup chopped onions, one sliced carrot, one peeled clove of garlic, and, if desired, three minced shallots. These ingredients are lightly stirred until browned. The temperature for browning is left to the cook's judgment. The vegetables are then removed, and a disjointed chicken or boned and cut-up chicken breasts are browned in the fat, the temperature and cooking time again being left to the cook's judgment. After the chicken is browned, the temperature is reduced and the following ingredients are added while the contents of the pan are stirred intermittently: two tablespoons flour, two tablespoons minced parsley, and appropriate amounts of chopped fresh chervil, thyme, salt, pepper, the perfunctory bay leaf, and the previously browned vegetables. Finally, one and one-half cups of dry red wine are added. The mixture is simmered, covered, over low heat for roughly one hour. One-half pound of sliced mushrooms is added for the last five minutes of cooking.
For those unpolished in the cooking arts, yet no less appreciative of coq au vin, the above recipe is more difficult to follow than would appear from the printed word. Notwithstanding all the features of known cooking apparatus, inexperienced cooks tend to burn the vegetables and overbrown the chicken. The inexperienced cook, completing the initial steps and leaving the mixture to simmer for one hour, will generally be in need of rest and want to undertake activity unrelated to cooking while waiting to add the mushrooms. The tendency is to rest longer than one hour with sometimes disastrous results if the cooking liquid should boil off.
Even for the experienced cook, to whom the above recipe presents no special difficulty, the preparation calls for constant attention, at least during the initial period, and that is time better put to other uses.